When hundreds of runners descend on Ernie Howlett Park in Rolling Hills Estates for Saturday’s Hills Are Alive 10K/5K, there will be one group operating on a different frequency.

Walt Ordway and his army of ham radio operators.

Their objective is to make sure the event goes off smoothly while monitoring the progress of the race.

Fourteen ham radio operators – under the umbrella of the Palos Verdes Radio Club – will be stationed at strategic locations throughout the course with Ordway at Net Control near the start/finish line.

“It’s a fun event. This is what we do every year. It’s a no-brainer now,” said Ordway, or K1DFL in the ham radio world.

The picturesque course begins at Ernie Howlett Park and uses mostly horse trails before winding its way through the South Coast Botanical Gardens and the Palos Verdes Landfill, so access can be limiting.

This is where Ordway and the other hams come into the picture.

If one of the water stations needs more supplies, a ham will radio it in. If there is an injury on the course, the hams will radio for help.

Ordway asks his hams to tabulate the top four men and women at each checkpoint so they can get a gauge on the race.

“They are our eyes and ears. They’re the most reliable, trustworthy thing about the race,” said race coordinator Michael Hogue, in his ninth year working with the hams. “In a way, it’s almost like they run the race.

“I honestly don’t know what we’d do without them. These guys are gold.”

Ordway’s crew is set up to work the Conquer the Bridge race on Labor Day weekend. It has already tested radios on the bridge. It took Ordway three days to set up that event.

The 66-year-old Ordway has been Net Control for almost every kind of race on the Palos Verdes Peninsula since 1985, taking over for Clint Mason (aka WAT6MJ), who relinquished the lead when he moved to Chicago.

Ordway knows the biggest problems in the Hills Are Alive Race might not occur at the designated checkpoints.

Usually he has a ham in a car to act as a rover. But with the Hills Are Alive, cars cannot access the horse trails.

Ordway’s solution? A ham on horseback.

“Because the race is mostly on horse trails, access is not easy,” Ordway said. “You need someone to monitor those trails and make sure there are no problems.”

If it seems that Ordway has this down to a science, it’s because he was a career engineer.

Ordway worked also that will go over the Vincent Thomas Bridge in San Pedro in the aerospace division of Hughes Aircraft Company for 30 years, overseeing the development of major defense systems and stealth aircraft.

After retiring from Hughes in 1997, Ordway jumped on another project when Texas Instruments came up with technology to make digital films a possibility.

Ordway became the chief technology officer for Digital Cinema Initiatives, a company formed by seven major Hollywood studios tasked with developing a universal digital format for film.

He said about 4,000 of a possible 36,000 screens in the U.S. are digitally capable now, and 6,000 of the 120,000 screens in the rest of the world are digital. And the numbers are on the rise.

“It changed the history of the movie business,” Ordway proclaimed proudly.

His ham radio hobby has turned into a passion.

Antennas rise out of his Rancho Palos Verdes home, where he has a view of the South Bay coastline and downtown Los Angeles from his driveway. He has a repeater receiver on the side of his house that relays radio frequencies and helps other hams communicate without line of sight.

Inside his house, in a small room just off his bedroom, lies his ham radio station. He has five radios, a computer and nifty mementos from his days at Hughes.

Growing up in New Hampshire, Ordway and his best friend, Frank Cartier, got their ham radio licenses to communicate with each other and with others around the world.

“There was no such thing as the Internet back then,” Ordway said. “Ham radios gave you a chance to talk to people around the world, and that was unbelievable. But that novelty is totally gone now.”

Ordway teaches ham radio classes at Hess Park four times a year, another task he inherited with Mason’s departure. Ordway said he has a 95 percent pass rate in his classes.

He’s noticed a trend among ham radio operators these days. Most are in it for neighborhood watch purposes or for emergency preparation, like when hams set up communication following Hurricane Katrina.

But Ordway tells his students not to wait for an emergency to use the radios.

“The old radios used to be easy to work, but today’s radios are more like computers,” Ordway said. “If it’s an emergency and you’re not familiar with the equipment, you may not feel comfortable working with it.

“So I tell these guys to get into the hobby. Volunteer to do a race like this. It forces you to become more familiar with how everything works.”

Ordway figures he and his crew will be done by 9:30 a.m., which gives him plenty of time to prepare for a weekend with his wife, Joanne, his two children, Scott and Michelle, and his four grandchildren.

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